BRAINTREE (CBS) – “I heard the news!” A customer at the Braintree Hostess shop threw up his arms and cheered Monday night. “Yes! We may survive!”

Just when we thought we’d taken the last bite out of the last Twinkie, there’s new hope the company may not go out of business after all. When the debt-ridden Hostess moved to liquidate Monday, a bankruptcy judge ordered the company to go into mediation with the employees union that had been on strike.

The clerk behind the register in Braintree, Michelle DuBois has been working at the bakery since she was 18-years old. She says she planned to retire there. “I hope it’s true. I really do…After 35 years, you know, I just can’t believe it. I feel like I’m in a nightmare, you know. Wake me up.” She’s among 300 Hostess employees in Massachusetts, more than 18,000 nation-wide. The shelves in her store are now almost completely bare, except for some bread and fruit cake.

Judge Robert Drain, who heard the case in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York in White Plains, said the company failed to go through the critical step of mediation. “Not to have gone through that step leaves a huge question mark in this case,” he says.

Turns out that spongy snack may be just as indestructible as it’s rumored to be.